It's i i'm jesse thorn my next guest is shake serano he's a writer he's covered basketball and music and other things for espn and vice and the ringer and more on the staff at the ring or now he took kind of an unusual path to making a career out of it was born and raised in texas he was originally a teacher who kind of wrote in his spare time he only started writing fulltime a little over two years ago he wrote his first book around then to the rap yearbook so new york times bestseller a critical favorite he's just follow that up with his second book it's called basketball and other things it's kind of like a late night party discussion with friends but britain now and also illustrated toronto talks about stuff like the greatest basketball villains which nba players get remembered for the wrong reasons and he asks important questions like was kobe bryant a dork jay joins me now from npr in new york chase aranha welcome to balls i great to have you on the show how man i appreciate you having me so why basketball what's so great about basketball what's not worry about basket that wasn't best support on the planet jesse how dare you had day you ask me that i though big baseball fan so i mean i'm obeys i'ma basketball fan too but i i love baseball so that's why i'm allowed to challenge you with that question oh my goodness you know at what time this guy asked me if i wanted to play baseball like a kid in my neighborhood so yo play baseball game lewis as he area that sounds like a lot of fun let's go try that and then i was just standing there for like three hours and i was like wind is a game start and he said yup good good game today i was blaine and outfield turned out and that was the end of the game for me so let's talk a little bit about how you started for your career as a writer um you didn't go to college to be a writer and and from what i gather you basically didn't aspire to be a writer is that true.